The only practical way is a NASA/Russian/ESA collaboration. The ISS is an incredible achievement, certainly impossible by any of those three alone. A moon base is technically an easier feat once a Saturn V style series of rockets is designed and built. Which NASA is in fact now doing. With ESA and Russian support, a moon base is totally realistic. The moon is rich with Helium-3, which could be an important resource in the distant future.

Also, just to say I favour lunar exploration over Martian exploration at present. Priorities should be actually proving we can build bases on extra terrestrial bodies, live there, and make them semi-self sufficient with a view to becoming fully self sufficient. We need a significant non-Earth population in the distant future if we want to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs at some point in the next few hundred, thousand or millions of years. Mars can be explored sure, but for the distance and cost, you gain little. An atmosphere is good for protection, but bad for weather. Protection can be provided by shielding on the moon. And you sure ain't going to terraform either of them, so why not stick locally. Moon should be a priority.

It's not suicide. Smokers do not smoke to kill themselves, and death is far from guaranteed; they're just more likely to develop certain diseases. Racing drivers, soldiers, skydivers, or most closely related, people who sunbathe; these people are (generally) not suicidal, but they know the risks of what they do. I'm not comparing how right/wrong these things are, just pointing out that taking risks does not mean suicidal.

Obama. Oh wait, it's from 2003. I didn't even see a date for the article. Not to mention the site seems like a tabloid paper. Yeah it's a horrible tabloid. One of our worst. I dug around for the date, and found another article from somewhere else reporting the story from 2003.

See this is why I love the Uk..... we don't care about God anymore, it's awesome!

MattDistillery

We'll burn in hell first ;) I'm not a Christian so I don't celebrate the religious aspect, and I don't know many people who do really. But I see nothing wrong with this, it's mostly traditional anyway. People are free to celebrate/mark it as they wish, even choose to ignore it. The reason for the loss of the religious aspect is partly because heavy tradition tends to stick around even after the meaning may be less relevant to people. We celebrate Guy Fawkes Night here, but few people care much for the origin. We know the story, but it's not why we set off fireworks. It's even argued that it wasn't a Christian festival before anyway, but I feel that's irrelevant given that the current model of Christmas stems from Christianity.